I love how the “Repair Bug” (Scruffy from Futurama) is whistling as he’s preparing to fix the thing that kills everyone on board and blows up the ship. And that he’s wearing coveralls, and not a star trek uniform. And the thumbs up he gives in panel 2! And seriously…we do need the Picard Face Palm for Codric’s comment above.

Lufftwaffe General Walther Wever was killed in 1936 when the self-destruct on the plane he was flying detonated for unknown causes. Operator error or faulty maintainece were the most likely causes.

Good for the world that Wever was killed. He was a strong voice for Germany building long-range strategic bombers. With those, Germany might have worn the Battle of Britain, and/been been able to bomb relocated Soviet industry beyond the Urals. Either way, they might have won the war before America even became involved. When Wever died, the germans concentrated solely on small, short-range tactical bombers which could not strike deep into either Britain or the Soviet Union. And the rest is history.

So, some incompentent German version of Scruffy the janitor screwed up, killed Wever and possibly saved the world.

Wait a second…why does the Enterprise even have a blender?? They’ve got a replicator that can make any food appear! Perhaps if the self destruct button DID get crossed with a blender, things would be okay after all!

But what if they get a deadly space plague, or zenomorphs, or something, if you can’t get rid of it it would be better to destroy the ship so it doesn’t infect the rest of civilization, and you’d want it to go off when you want it, and only when you want it, so you need to maintain it.